scholarly journals Ancestral Monuments, Iconoclasm, and Memorial Culture in the Sixteenth-Century Low Countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben Suykerbuyk

This contribution assesses the impact of the Protestant Reformation and iconoclasm on the memorial culture of tombs, epitaphs, and rituals in the Low Countries (c. 1520-1585), and analyses the consequences these events had on ancestral remembrance. Demonstrating how Protestant critiques and iconoclastic attacks fundamentally endangered the archival function of churches, it argues that this imminent threat to memory provoked a heightened awareness of the ancestral past in the later sixteenth century. Most significantly, it shows that this precarious situation led to the genesis of a new type of commemorative manuscript, the épitaphier, in which heraldic, genealogical, and other information on various types of memorial monuments in churches was recorded. In tracing the production and dissemination of these épitaphiers, the article casts new light on the pan-European heraldic and ‘genealogical craze’ in this period: while English scholars have emphasized social dynamics as explanation, this essay puts forward the religious debates as a hitherto neglected factor, and demonstrates how the two interlocked.

2019 ◽  
pp. 40-61
Author(s):  
Martin Pugh

This chapter focuses on the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Following Henry VIII's break with Rome in 1531, the English Reformation led Britain into a protracted struggle with the two great Catholic powers, Spain and France, for the next 300 years. The long-term effect was to define Britain as the leading Protestant power; but more immediately, it posed a far greater threat to England than Islam, and effectively destroyed the rationale for crusading activities. In this situation, the Islamic empires actually became a valuable balancing factor in European diplomacy. Henry's readiness to deal with the Muslim powers was far from eccentric during the sixteenth century. Both King Francis I of France and Queen Elizabeth I of England took the policy of collaboration much further.


Author(s):  
Kenneth Austin

This book examines the attitudes of various Christian groups in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations towards Jews, the Hebrew language, and Jewish learning. Martin Luther's writings are notorious, but Reformation attitudes were much more varied and nuanced than these might lead us to believe. The book has much to tell us about the Reformation and its priorities, and it has important implications for how we think about religious pluralism more broadly. The book begins by focusing on the impact and various forms of the Reformation on the Jews and pays close attention to the global perspective on Jewish experiences in the early modern period. It highlights the links between Jews in Europe and those in north Africa, Asia Minor, and the Americas, and it looks into the Jews' migrations and reputation as a corollary of Christians' exploration and colonisation of several territories. It seeks to next establish the position Jews occupied in Christian thinking and society by the start of the Reformation era, and then moves on to the first waves of reform in the earliest decades of the sixteenth century in both the Catholic and Protestant realms. The book explores the radical dimension to the Protestant Reformation and talks about identity as the heart of a fundamental issue associated with the Reformation. It analyzes “Counter Reformation” and discusses the various forms of Protestantism that had been accepted by large swathes of the population of many territories in Europe. Later chapters turn attention to relations between Jews and Christians in the first half of the seventeenth century and explore the Sabbatean movement as the most significant messianic movement since the first century BCE. In conclusion, the book summarizes how the Jews of Europe were in a very different position by the end of the seventeenth century compared to where they had been at the start of the sixteenth century. It recounts how Jewish communities sprung up in places which had not traditionally been a home to Jews, especially in Eastern Europe.


2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-43
Author(s):  
Maarten J. M. Christenhusz

ABSTRACT: A sixteenth century Dutch hortus siccus of Brabantian origin has been rediscovered and is described here. The plants preserved in it are identified and most of its history is revealed.


Author(s):  
Ian Woodfield

Joseph II’s failed scheme to swap the Austrian Low Countries for Bavaria provoked the formation of a league of states opposed to this reconfiguration of Europe. In order to repair the damage done to his reputation in the German-speaking world, he reinstated the recently disbanded Singspiel, so that it could compete with the Italian troupe. A lighthearted contest in the Orangerie at Schönbrunn inaugurated two years of intense operatic rivalry. Thanks to Dittersdorf’s hit success Der Apotheker, which overshadowed the impact of Figaro, the German party established an early ascendancy, but the Italians struck back with an opera featuring Spanish fashion. Martín y Soler’s Una cosa rara was greeted with storms of applause at its premiere on the name day of the fiancée of Archduke Franz, second in line to the Habsburg Monarchy.


2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
F.W. De Wet

The necessity of explicating metatheoretical assumptions regarding the view on reality in cientific practical theological research This article is the second in the research project “Metatheoretical assumptions in Practical Theology”. In this project – as indicated in the previous article − a group of reformed theologians is elucidating and discussing their metatheoretical and other perspectives regarding research in Practical Theology. In this article the necessity to explain metatheoretical assumptions concerning a view on reality, is discussed from a reformed perspective. The practical theological implications of a view on reality with its roots in the sixteenth-century protestant Reformation are critically compared with an alternative view on reality in the contemporary context which focuses more on the horizontal dimension of the action events taking place in praxis. This comparison is done with a view to responding to this alternative view in a responsible way. Essential characteristics of the sixteenth-century reformed view on reality seem to be its Scripture-determined vision and theocentric focus as well as the way in which human life and actions are represented as reflections of the “imago Dei”. The need to critically reflect on these characteristics and to newly align this view on reality with respect to challenges posed in the contemporary context, is explored.


1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 149-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. J. McNair

Between the execution of Gerolamo Savonarola at Florence in May 1498 and the execution of Giordano Bruno at Rome in February 1600, western Christendom was convulsed by the protestant reformation, and the subject of this paper is the effect that that revolution had on the Italy that nourished and martyred those two unique yet representative men: unique in the power and complexity of their personalities, representative because the one sums up the medieval world with all its strengths and weaknesses while the other heralds the questing and questioning modern world in which we live.


1981 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Orme

During the last hundred years our knowledge of the educational institutions of medieval England has steadily increased, both of schools and universities. We know a good deal about what they taught, how they were organised and where they were sited. The next stage is to identify their relationship with the society which they existed to serve. Whom did they train, to what standards and for what ends? These questions pose problems. They cannot be answered from the constitutional and curricular records which tell us about the structure of educational institutions. Instead, they require a knowledge of the people—the pupils and scholars—who went to the medieval schools and universities. We need to recover their names, to compile their biographies and thereby to establish their origins, careers and attainments. If this can be done on a large enough scale, the impact of education on society will become clearer. In the case of the universities, the materials for this task are available and well known. Thanks to the late Dr A. B. Emden, most of the surviving names of the alumni of Oxford and Cambridge have been collected and published, together with a great many biographical records about them. For the schools, on the other hand, where most boys had their literary education if they had one at all, such data are not available. Except for Winchester and Eton, we do not possess lists of the pupils of schools until the middle of the sixteenth century, and there is no way to remedy the deficiency.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sari Goldstein Ferber ◽  
Gal Shoval ◽  
Viviana Trezza ◽  
Giorgio Di Lorenzo ◽  
Rodolfo Rossi ◽  
...  

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